A great interview has been released today with ESIC Commissioner Ian Smith where he discussed topics ranging from the current investigation into match-fixing in North America to the coaching bans issued by ESIC after the discovery of an observer error in 2020.
During the conversation, Mr. Smith attempted to explain why ESIC remained silent for two years regarding the North American match-fixing mentioned by them in 2020. The main reasons were: lack of conclusive evidence, funding issues to conduct a detailed investigation, difficulties in dealing with certain bookmakers and refocusing his personal attention on more pressing issues. Smith also clarified that at one point ESIC had enough material to charge five or six individuals, but as these individuals had ceased to be actively involved in the game, it was decided not to pursue charges.
Many organizations felt hesitant to sign players from the lower leagues in North America for fear of negative associations with those involved in manipulating match results. While some of those suspected of manipulation have made the switch to VALORANT and have had impressive success, escaping punishment for their actions. The integrity of minor league competition also suffered and, deprived of virtually all information, fans were left wondering whether the games they were watching were real or not.
About unfulfilled promises
It's been five days since August 23rd, when two years passed with the last public update from the ESIC regarding their investigation into match result manipulation in North America. It was September 2020 when this watchdog organization in the world of cybersports first revealed the long-awaited investigation, sparking a lively debate in the community after months of active speculation about ESEA MDL (now ESL Challenger) players allegedly influencing match results to enrich themselves on betting. After nearly six months of silence on the matter, Mr. Smith finally revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has stepped in and the results of the first phase of the investigation will be released in "ten days or two weeks." He emphasized that the commission has "very strong evidence" of wrongdoing and that the players face long-term suspensions.
Mr. Smith:
We'll deal with the first part fairly promptly, since . well, we're dealing with inconsiderate people.
Five days later, thanks to the efforts of several journalists, the text of the transcript of the conversation relating to the original leak, which was later accessed by the same journalists through an ESIC request, was made public. This transcript recorded a dialog between Sebastian "retchy" Tropiano, Carson "nosraC" O'Reilly, and Kevin "4pack" Przypasniak, representing Rebirth's roster at the time, where details of plans to manipulate the results of two ESEA MDL matches were discussed. The three players were part of the five suspended by ESEA following the release of the transcript while ESIC dealt with the situation.
Ten days passed, followed by a fortnight. But the promised report, which had been hoped for because of Mr. Smith's words, remained unseen. Practically four months later, a reply came to the publication of the transcript - it should be noted that this did not contain the initial results Mr. Smith had previously spoken of. The response from the watchdog organization consisted of five-year bans for retchy and 4pack, while nosraC was given the more lenient punishment of a 111-day ban for keeping quiet about ESIC's corrupt practices. The other two players discussed in the recording were not charged.
The observer at the time noted that he considered this particular case separately from the others because of the publicity surrounding the details and called the decision a sort of preliminary update. It was emphasized that this was far from the final result of his deeply wide-ranging investigation, which included "34 additional and still active investigations."
It was taking place on August 23, 2021.
Long silence
After this point, ESIC became rather silent, both in the public sphere and with respect to requests for comment related to the manipulation investigation in North America. As a result, this has caused confusion in the cybersports arena, especially in North America. Instead of speaking out with updates, we have only seen mentions of refereeing errors and subsequent penalties for coaches. ESIC also did a poor job of managing this situation, especially when they were facing a lawsuit from Nicolai "HUNDEN" Petersen, and the actual part of the work on this case was left to Michal Slowinski, tournament organizer, and Steve Dudenhoeffer, software development manager at ESEA, but that's another story.
So what did Mr. Smith say, returning to the conversation after two years of silence regarding the investigation?
He began by explicitly expressing support for the allegations presented by ESIC and noting that they clearly justify the need for an investigation. In order to sort out these allegations, the watchdogs need the cooperation of the betting operators to find out whether bets were placed, what the value of the bets were, who placed them and from what region.
Mr. Smith:
We have seen many bets that indicate the outcome was known before the bet was placed, or even at the time the bet was placed, which somehow hints at manipulation or an orchestrated course of events," Mr. Smith explained. "If that makes sense, it's already pushing for an investigation, and as part of that, the progress of the match is being analyzed
Then he touched on the point where things got "stuck," explaining the intervention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
The FBI has other concerns
Mr. Smith:
When law enforcement gets involved, and I would say especially in the United States and the FBI in this particular case, they have completely different priorities than ESIC. We regulate the players, the sport, the participants. The main thing they're interested in is finding out which betting operators were illegally offering markets to residents and citizens of the United States. They're interested in how these guys are betting from places where betting is illegal.
They want to prosecute betting operators who are operating illegally in the United States. Most of the communication between law enforcement and ESIC is more about the betting operator than the players because, as you realize, in many cases, to put it a little disparagingly, the players are nobody to the police. They're not famous people, they don't attract attention. Law enforcement agencies tend to pursue cases that they believe are of public interest. By their rules of evidence, they are prohibited from giving us any information. So they can't tell us and provide us what they have learned until the criminal trial begins and the evidence is presented in court.
What happened in the vast majority of the old MDL cases is that the betting operators who were then operating illegally in Canada and the US were unwilling to cooperate in providing us with evidence. Many of them were Bitcoin operators without any kind of license. While we were able to contact maybe four or five of them, none of them were willing to provide us with the necessary customer information to connect punters with a bet.
Later in the interview, Mr. Smith added something else on this last point:
We're still hoping that the relationship with these betting operators will improve to the point where they feel comfortable giving us the proof of bets that we've been asking for the last two years. Those guys who operate in the crypto space, except for one we talk to frequently, are not interested in dealing with us because they jeopardize their illegal position in the United States. Nobody wants the FBI knocking on their door, and any indication that they were accepting customers and bets from the United States at that time would subject them to criminal prosecution in the United States, end of story.
Insufficient evidence; inaction on the part of ESIC
Mr. Smith then explains that the match evidence that was analyzed by CS:GO experts was "not conclusive enough," and while many of those experts were inclined to say that certain points in the recordings looked suspicious, they could not definitively rule out ordinary poor game performance.
"By the time we felt we had enough data on maybe six more players to act on the betting evidence we had and the game [gameplay from the demos], all of those players were no longer active in the scene and the remaining active ones were ones we just didn't have enough data to hold them accountable," Mr. Smith continues, revealing that the ESIC did not take action against players they even identified as clearly manipulating the outcome of matches. "These cases remain open, as silly as that sounds."
Mr. Smith explains that he expected betting operators to cooperate and provide information more than they did. "It looked plain and simple - and it still does, I'm still fully convinced that these cases were rigged, I'd bet my mortgage that these matches were rigged, but that's a very different thing to actually charging and banning punters based on my belief rather than ironclad evidence that will stand up to scrutiny by external bodies.
"Especially in the United States, because of the litigious nature of society and the way the legal system works, if you make a mistake on a matter like this and someone sues you for loss of earnings for the next unknown number of years, loss of reputation, that kind of risk could bankrupt ESIC in one case, so it's not something we can do on a whim."
What spurred the silence?
Putting Mr. Smith under direct pressure, the question was why ESIC has not provided a single update regarding the investigation in the last two years and why this is the first time we have heard of any news on the matter.
"That, in a way, is on me, I expected people like you to ask me that question because putting activity into old investigations when we already have a backlog of hundreds of new ones is a matter of resources, time and our attention," says Mr. Smith. "We are woefully under-resourced relative to our caseload. That's why my personal emphasis has always been on 'what we're doing now' rather than 'what we did last week, last month, last year', which I admit is a mistake, and I explain and justify it.
"The situation is far from ideal, but we are now fixing that issue with resources. We need more people, and those who can follow updates on our website and say, 'Look, I've noticed that our website hasn't been updated on this case in six months or a year.' Personally, I can't afford that approach, and the same goes for several other staff members who work here. To put it bluntly, increased resources, both human and financial, are exactly what we need to serve the community the way it deserves to be served. At the same time, I expect that, like you, the community will ask me these questions.
"I'm absolutely prepared to answer that question, but I don't spend my days doing investigations and thinking, 'Perhaps we should look back at that case that happened two years ago.' I recognize that it's unsatisfactory, and we're actively moving to make it more satisfactory."
Near the end of the interview, Mr. Smith announces that ESIC will be making changes soon, pointing to changes in the internal structure of the organization in the coming months and the resolution of their resource issues. He also emphasizes the huge increase in ESIC's workload with the onset of the COVID pandemic and says that the volume of problems shook him, was one of the reasons why they were not "proactively" communicating with the community. Nevertheless, after repeatedly breaking deadlines and promises of change, it is hard to believe in future change.
After all this time, the first words on this situation came out thanks to a small interview on a podcast, and that news essentially revealed that they were not continuing to work on the investigation and had to be reminded to even tell the public about it.... this is, to say the least, insulting and highly accusatory to the few people who were still hopeful that ESIC had been working on resolving the investigation for the past few years.
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